


Explosion, Implosion

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, James really is very fond of quoting Shakespeare, M/M, Realisations, Three Things, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three things that James notices. <i>He didn't know that he could feel like this.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Explosion, Implosion

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes (apart from the song lyrics) are from the Bard's R&J, but by no means assume a similar star-crossed fate for our boys!

James didn't know, before he met Robbie Lewis. He didn't _know_ – poor defense that that is, it is his only. It feels like a paltry straw man, clutched close to his chest, disintegrating at the speed that straw burns.

The truth will set you free, they say, but the truth is as harsh as a swallow of rough whiskey. It burns.

The first thing that James notices is the lovely line of Lewis's throat as he takes a swig from his pint – muscles clenching above the knot of his tie, James himself swallowing in reflexive sympathy. 

James hadn't known that he wanted anyone – didn't know that he _could_ want anyone – and with the knowledge sitting heavy at the back of his throat, he wants to deny it. He wants.

The second thing that he notices are the tendons in Lewis's hands, the way his fingers clench around his pint glass. (He has no difficulty, now, in imagining those fingers in other, intimate situations.)

The _frisson_ of awareness that skates across his spine, the sudden awareness of the boundaries of his skin – of his nearness to Lewis – a sudden, sharp, instinctual imagining of heat, and pressure, and sweaty desire. It is nothing that James has known before. 

He wants to deny it – wants to return himself to a cloistered, careful, sexless existence. To live like a monk; oh, to live like a beetle or a ladybird, captured in a glass jar with a few springs of wilting grass – to be removed from choice, to be free.

(The truth will set you free, they say.)

The third thing that he notices is the curve of Lewis's lips, forming a smile. Forming words, careful and sure and clear. He reaches out to touch James, a hand on his elbow, a touch to adjust his tie. Each touch fires his nerves like the explosion of a bomb, ever-bright and consuming.

He notices the line of stubble on Lewis's jaw, rough and dark and half-grown. He can imagine the burn of brushing against it, the chafing of lips pressed to lips. He can imagine how it would feel to touch those lips, to learn the lines of Lewis's face, to press against him. _But "palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."_

The touch of two hands, the chaste press of flesh against flesh – skin underlaid by tendons, by muscle, by bone, the rush of blood and the flare of nerves - it is what James wants, what he yearns for with a cruelly sharp clarity, hard enough to hurt. The spirit is willing, but all flesh is grass, tinder-ready, and all too inflammable.

James has never known this, never wanted this – he was once close to swearing off it, promising himself to a life without this. 

_He didn't know,_ he tells himself again. James didn't know that he could feel like this – but it is like forbidden knowledge, like the fruit presented to Eve – the particular and ineffable fact that, once known, is indelible.

He finds, of course, that he cannot deny anything to Lewis. _"Give me my sin again,"_ they said, and James knows how that feels, wakening and burning with the sudden silent implosion of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lewis_challenge roulette 2015 challenge, song prompt "Sex Bomb" by Tom Jones
> 
>  
> 
> _Now you found the secret code_  
>  I use to wash away my lonely blues well  
> So I can't deny or lie cause you're a  
> Sexbomb sexbomb you're a sexbomb uh, huh  
> You can give it to me when I need to come along give it to me  
> Sexbomb sexbomb you're my sexbomb  
> And baby you can turn me on baby you can turn me on  
> You know what you're doing to me don't you. ha ha,  
> I know you do


End file.
